us appearance, in order to inveigle their victims. You would read,
"A tradesman, established for seventy years in the City, and known,
and much respected by Messrs. N. M. Rothschild and Baring Brothers, has
pressing need for three pounds until next Saturday. He can give security
for half a million, and forty thousand pounds will be given for the use
of the loan," and so on; or, "An influential body of capitalists are
about to establish a company, of which the business will be enormous and
the profits proportionately prodigious. They will require A SECRETARY,
of good address and appearance, at a salary of two thousand per annum.
He need not be able to write, but address and manners are absolutely
necessary. As a mark of confidence in the company, he will have to
deposit," &c.; or, "A young widow (of pleasing manners and appearance)
who has a pressing necessity for four pounds ten for three weeks, offers
her Erard's grand piano, valued at three hundred guineas; a diamond
cross of eight hundred pounds; and board and lodging in her elegant
villa near Banbury Cross, with the best references and society, in
return for the loan." I suspect these people are ogres. There are ogres
and ogres. Polyphemus was a great, tall, one-eyed, notorious ogre,
fetching his victims out of a hole, and gobbling them one after
another. There could be no mistake about him. But so were the Sirens
ogres--pretty blue-eyed things, peeping at you coaxingly from out of the
water, and singing their melodious wheedles. And the bones round their
caves were more numerous than the ribs, skulls, and thigh-bones round
the cavern of hulking Polypheme.

To the castle-gates of some of these monsters up rides the dapper
champion of the pen; puffs boldly upon the horn which hangs by the
chain; enters the hall resolutely, and challenges the big tyrant sulking
within. We defy him to combat, the enormous roaring ruffian! We give
him a meeting on the green plain before his castle. Green? No wonder it
should be green: it is manured with human bones. After a few graceful
wheels and curvets, we take our ground. We stoop over our saddle. 'Tis
but to kiss the locket of our lady-love's hair. And now the vizor is up:
the lance is in rest (Gillott's iron is the point for me). A touch of
the spur in the gallant sides of Pegasus, and we gallop at the great
brute.

"Cut off his ugly head, Flibbertygibbet, my squire!" And who are these
who pour out of the castle? the imprisoned m